The soul of South Africa

The township of Soweto offers travellers not beaches or boutique hotels, but a chance to rub up against the still-raw history of apartheid

These young Sowetans live in a place that's regarded as the soul of South Africa.

Photograph by: Tallulah Photography, Special to the Vancouver Sun
, Special to The Sun

It is midweek, and a special service is being held at Regina Mundi Roman Catholic Church in Soweto, South Africa to bless a group of high school students who are prepping for final exams.

Neatly attired in navy blue school sweaters, the students, accompanied by the church choir as well as African drums, belt out a hip-swaying rendition of Amazing Grace. The service is a sign of how far Soweto, famed as the heart of the anti-apartheid movement, has come.

Not so long ago, teenagers like these were attending funerals at Regina Mundi for classmates gunned down by police during the Soweto uprising. In 2008, courting celestial favour to attain lofty marks may seem self-serving, but it is, at least, peaceful.

But Regina Mundi's purpose once extended beyond the mere religious. Under apartheid -- which ended in 1994 when Nelson Mandela became president in the nation's first multi-racial democratic election -- blacks christened the church the Parliament of Soweto. During the 1980s, it was a place where thousands could assemble without fear of arrest for breaking a state-of-emergency edict that forbade gatherings of three or more.

While pious voices soared, activists communicated their plans by singing the time and location of covert meetings. To outsiders, all the congregants appeared to be engaged in devout chorus, while the singing from 3,000 throats prevented spies from overhearing clandestine schemes.

Soweto is a three-hour drive from Kruger National Park, a world-renowned 20,000-sq.-km wildlife sanctuary where the Big Five -- lions, leopards, buffalo, rhinos and elephants -- roam.

Many of Kruger's one million annual visitors fly directly into the park from Johannesburg's Tambo International Airport. However, a growing number -- 2,000 a day -- are taking the short detour by taxi from the airport to Soweto, which is part of Greater Johannesburg, the country's economic centre.

Land-locked Soweto, an acronym for South West Townships, offers neither beaches nor boutique hotels. What it does offer travellers is the chance to rub up against the still-raw history of apartheid, the 20th century's most infamous system of institutionalized racism.

This oppressive history is represented in the cultural icons scattered about the sprawling suburb of an estimated 3.5 million people. This meshing of Soweto's tumultuous past with a dynamic and hopeful -- if sometimes grim -- present is an emotional yet satisfying journey for any visitor.

A guide is vital to ensure a safe and enriching Soweto experience. One of the best is Nel Redelinghuys, a former history lecturer from Vista University in Soweto who takes small groups of tourists around the city.

Redelinghuys provides home-made snacks and chilled beer, and takes her clients to a restaurant at the end of the tour. More importantly, her profound knowledge of Soweto and close friendships with many of those involved in the township's bloody history ensures the tour comes alive.

On the way to Regina Mundi, Redelinghuys points out such curiosities as the Morse code of hand signals and horn beeps that keep the streets' congested stream of vans, "skora-skoras" (beater cars) and horse-pulled carts from crashing into one other.

The Hector Pieterson Memorial, one of many stops on Redelinghuys's tour, is a memorial to one of the first students slain by police during the June 16, 1976 Soweto Uprising, when 10,000 children marched to protest the introduction of Afrikaans, the language of white rule, as a medium of instruction.

Near the entrance is a life-size reproduction of the iconic photograph that hardened opposition to apartheid both in and outside of South Africa: a black-and-white image of Pieterson's body in the arms of Mbuyisa Makhubo, the dying boy's hysterical sister running alongside.

Video footage and photographs inside the museum detail what led to that fateful day, when police opened fire on chanting, dancing youth. The official death toll of 59 is in dispute; between 150 to 200 children died and many who were assumed dead fled to neighbouring countries to train as guerrilla fighters.

A tour necessarily includes a visit to the world-class Apartheid Museum, located in Johannesburg. Upon entering, visitors are given a pass that arbitrarily assigns them black or white racial status. "Whites" and "non-whites" have different entrances, forcing friends and family to be split up, re-creating the disconcerting sense of forced segregation that was the foundation of apartheid, meaning "separation" in Afrikaans.

The museum tells the story of apartheid through multimedia exhibits that include enlarged archival photos, newspaper clippings, film footage and artifacts. This is no eye-glazing history-book encounter; visitors are immersed in the despair of a half-century of apartheid.

Tourists can clamber inside an enormous armoured police "casspir" that runs old surveillance footage of a township taken from inside the vehicle. Included is the 1961 BBC interview with Nelson Mandela conducted while he was hiding from authorities, as well as rooms displaying hanging nooses and weaponry -- the instruments of white control.

In Soweto, anti-apartheid leaders such as Mandela are so revered that their former homes have been turned into shrines. The Mandela Family Museum on Vilakazi Street is one such stop on Redelinghuys's tour. The tiny house is modest, filled with ephemera and household clothing and goods from Mandela's early life when he was married to activist Winnie Mandela.

A short amble away from the Mandela museum is a residence of Archbishop emeritus Desmond Tutu. Like Mandela, Tutu is a Nobel laureate and regarded as South Africa's moral conscience. Vilakazi Street is famed as the only street in the world where two Nobel Peace Prize winners have lived. The houses are also a short drive from the Hector Pieterson Memorial museum and located close to B&Bs.

South Africa's gaping socioeconomic chasm means that only a sliver of the population benefits from industrialization and the mining of platinum, diamonds, gold and chromium. The vast majority of people are poverty-stricken, unemployed and dwell in substandard housing without electricity or running water.

A slowly emerging middle class, however, means consumer goods are becoming increasingly available. The Maponya Mall, opened in 2007, is a point of pride in Soweto, with its sculptural curved glass walls and stores offering luxury goods. The mall also acknowledges Soweto's apartheid past -- a life-size bronze replica of Mbuyisa Makhubo holding Hector Pieterson's body dominates the entrance.

Redelinghuys's tour includes a visit to century-old Kliptown, the birthplace of South Africa's democracy. In 1955, a group called the Congress of the People met in Kliptown to accept the Freedom Charter, a guiding document for a new, free South Africa enshrining human rights.

Despite its lofty place in Soweto's history, Kliptown is extremely poor; its squatter camps have no electricity and the energy for cooking and lighting comes from car batteries. At the entrance to one Kliptown squatter camp, Redelinghuys turns the tour over to Sipho Dladla and Tshepo Ndlovu, two young men who are forming a youth drama group. "Welcome," says Dladla with a beautiful smile, "to our beloved ghetto."

Redelinghuys lets the young men lead a walk-about of this calamity of urban planning, past one-room homes with collapsing walls, squawking chickens, curious children and drying laundry. Scattered about the squatter camp are tiny businesses: hair salons where women gather to gossip and have their hair twisted into elaborate designs, or women selling cooked chicken at a blackened outdoor stove. There is also a traditional healer's shack where residents go for medical help, including treatment for HIV-AIDS, which afflicts 20 per cent of South Africa's population.

No matter the socioeconomic status, one thing unites South Africans -- soccer. Soweto boasts not one but three teams: the Orlando Pirates, Moroka Swallows and the Kaizer Chiefs. In 2002, South Africa was awarded the 2010 Federation Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) World Cup.

With the football extravaganza only two years away, stadium construction continues at a gimpy gallop to ensure 10 world-class stadiums are ready for the onslaught of teams and fans.

Renovations include a major facelift to 90,000-seat First National Bank Stadium (Soccer City), a colossus on Soweto's outskirts that will host the final and opening matches -- if the tournament isn't shuffled off to another country due to construction lags, electricity supply problems and safety issues.

Safety is an issue -- South Africa has the second highest murder rate in the world behind Colombia, according to United Nations crime statistics, and Soweto is not considered safe at night. However, this doesn't stop young Sowetans -- elegantly coiffed and attired -- from flocking to nightclubs to drink and dance on weekends.

South African Tourism is working hard to make the country more attractive to foreigners, identifying more than 50,000 accommodation establishments and 700 events on its website.

Still, there is a bit of the Wild West in this achingly beautiful nation with its tumultuous history. Soweto, regarded as the soul of South Africa, is an inspiring place to visit, but it is not for the faint of heart or those unwilling to compromise on luxury.

IF YOU GO

- The flight to Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg is arduous, with a stopover in either London or Singapore or Hong Kong, depending whether you fly east or west.

- Find a Soweto guest house or B&B through the South Africa Tourism or South Africa Explored websites: www.sa-venues.com. The newly opened Holiday Inn Soweto Freedom Square hotel is about $200 a night. Reservations at www.ihg.com.